Obama promises new immigration plan but keeps endgame close to his vest

1:44 AM 12/31/2012
Neil Munro
The Daily Caller

President Barack Obama promised Dec. 30 to introduce an immigration bill during 2013, but activists on all sides of the debate are trying to understand his strategy.

He may be gunning for a victory in the mid-term elections by introducing a bill so radical that it will spark an emotional controversy from whites, which would then spur many angry Latinos to vote Democratic in the 2014 midterm elections, said Robert de Posada, former head of a GOP-affiliated group, The Latino Coalition.

“The word that I’ve heard from many, is [that he will] submit a very, very liberal plan that most Republicans will not support, that most southern and moderate Democrats will not support,” he said.

When the bill fails, “they can announce once again that they tried [and that Latinos] need to rally in the next election,” said Posada, who helped President George W. Bush win 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2004, during the housing boom.

But that strategy would break Obama’s election-trail promise to help Latinos, said one Hill staffer who is working to pass an ambitious bill that would eventually provide citizenship to millions of Democratic-leaning, low-skill Latinos and their extended relations.

However, he noted, Obama hasn’t met with Democratic Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the leading Capitol Hill advocate for amnesty for illegal immigrants, since November.

“We don’t quite know what the White House is doing,” he said.

Obama sketched his 2013 plans during a low-pressure interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.